National News

DHS Workers Watch Netflix, Charge Overtime: Report

by Arden Dier, Newser Staff

(NEWSER) – An Office of Special Counsel report has detailed a "profound and entrenched problem" at six Department of Homeland Security offices, where employees have been dipping into a "candy bowl" of unearned overtime money to boost their paychecks. The routine practice of claiming Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime—meant to compensate urgent or unanticipated work—bumps up paychecks by as much as 25% and runs the department $8.7 million a year in a "gross waste of government funds," the Washington Post reports; it cites an OSC official who says that number could be in the tens of millions.